


Family Game Night

by zelda_addict



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Because of Reasons, Gen, Gender-Neutral Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Post-Season/Series 05, Team Bonding, Unexpected Skills, Video & Computer Games, Voltron Gen Mini Bang 2018, let's also pretend all is well because we can, let's call it AU, unexpected lack of skills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 10:13:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15313284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zelda_addict/pseuds/zelda_addict
Summary: Set just after the end of Season 5. The team hasn't seen Keith in a long time, so they decide to have a team bonding night. Shiro and Coran go back to the Space Mall to find a racing game for the Mercury Gameflux.





	Family Game Night

**Author's Note:**

> It was a pleasure working with tumblr user clambatch. I had to scale the art down to fit well within the story, so I really recommend checking out her art post to see it in its full glory.
> 
> For obvious reasons, this basically became an AU after Season 6 dropped, but we decided not to revise it.
> 
> The game is a weird mishmash of the racing game genre with heavy Mario Kart influences. The other mentioned game's influence should also be pretty obvious.

One of the things the group had asked of Keith when he decided to work full-time with the Blade of Marmora was that he check in with them every once in a while. He had just finished telling them about his latest mission and meeting his mother.

Shiro knew that locating his family meant a great deal to Keith, but instead of looking happy, his face on the vid screen seemed haggard.

“It’s been a while since you’ve come by the castle for a visit,” Shiro mentioned. “Maybe you could ask Kolivan to take a few days to relax? You _did_ just finish a mission, after all.”

The other paladins, Allura, and Coran were quick to agree.

“Actually,” Keith admitted, “that sounds great. Kolivan doesn’t seem to be too happy with my performance lately, and this whole thing with my mom is...weird.”

“You just need some time,” Allura assured him. “We’re happy to have you with us.”

After the transmission ended, the group decided to make it a sort of a party. Hunk was in charge of refreshments, of course, but beyond that, the plans began to fall apart fairly quickly.

“What about entertainment?” Lance wanted to know. “I mean, yeah, we’re all going to eat and talk and stuff, but after that? We need some way to unwind.”

“I’d suggest watching a movie,” Pidge remarked, “but first we all have to agree on one, which would probably never happen, and we don’t have any.”

“I’ve got my music player,” Lance offered, “but most of it isn’t exactly dance music...”

“Hey, Allura,” Hunk asked the princess, “what kind of things did you used to do around the castle for fun?”

“Actually,” the princess begrudgingly admitted, “games were generally considered to be things for very young children, and I’m afraid we don’t have any of them here any longer. I spent most of my free time reading about the cultures of our allies and sparring on the training deck.”

“I guess there’s always the Gameflux,” Pidge mentioned with a shrug, “but we only have the game it came with, and that one’s single-player.”

“There was all kinds of Earth junk in the shop we bought it from!” Lance grinned. “I’ll bet there’s some other games for the system there. Looks like it’s time for us all to take another trip to the space mall!” 

“And we’ve got money now, too!” Hunk agreed. Lotor had been more than happy to exchange GAC for Coran and Allura’s old Altean currency. It probably wasn’t worth as much as he’d given them, what with 10,000 years of galactic inflation, but he’d been eager to get his hands on a part of Altean culture thought lost to time.

“I don’t think so,” Shiro declared firmly. When the others, especially Lance, looked like he’d just told them all holidays and birthdays were cancelled forever, he amended his statement. “We really don’t want to cause another scene like last time, and we should leave enough people here to respond in case of an emergency.”

“I don’t think the security guard got a very good look at me,” Coran mused, “and you didn’t go along, did you, Shiro?”

“I didn’t go along, either,” Allura chimed. Shiro and Coran both gave her a pointed look and she sighed. “I know, I know, who would create a wormhole if we really need one...”

“I’m sorry, Allura. I’m sure you’ll get a chance to go some other time.” After Allura smiled to show there were no true hard feelings, Shiro turned his focus to Lance and Pidge. “Now, what was the name of the store where you bought the game system?”

“Uh...” Both paladins considered the question for a few moments.

“I don’t remember.” Pidge shrugged.

“It was run by an alien.”

“We’re in outer space, Lance. _Everything_ is run by aliens.”

“Yeah, but this guy was like the Earth alien stereotype. You know, little, green man with big, black eyes and a head shaped like an upside-down teardrop?”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure we’ll find it.”

“Remember,” Pidge cautioned, “we have the Gameflux Two, just in case he has anything for the first system.”

“Also, please don’t get anything lame or educational,” Lance pleaded.

“I do know how to have fun, Lance. Promise.”

As Shiro and Coran headed to the pod bay, Allura went to help Hunk inventory ingredients in the galley, and Lance and Pidge set about moving the Gameflux into the common area with the most comfortable seating.

*****

After a short period of searching, Coran and Shiro located the correct store. “Terra, huh?” Shiro chuckled and shook his head. “They must have been too distracted by the game to look at the name because they should have remembered that.”

“Oh?” Coran asked. “Does it have some special, human meaning?”

“It’s another name for our home planet.”

The shopkeeper approached in a bright purple leisure suit jacket and gold parachute pants. “Can I interest you in the latest Earth fashions?” he asked politely.

“Ooh!” Coran looked their host up and down. “I quite like that jacket. How are you getting the shoulders so pointy?”

“Actually,” Shiro cut in, “what we’re really looking for are game cartridges for the Mercury Gameflux Two system.”

The alien blinked. “Pardon?”

Shiro glanced around and noticed there were still boxes of the game system in the display window and pointed. “I have friends who bought one of those.”

“Ah, yes! They received a Kaltenecker with their purchase.”

“Um, yeah. You may have cartridges that can be used with it. They would be about this size,” Shiro paused to form a rectangle between his thumbs and index fingers, “and they probably come in a small box with pictures on the outside.”

“Let me check in the back.”

While they waited, Coran scanned a rack of jackets similar to the store owner’s but ultimately decided he didn’t like the fit when he tried one on over his uniform. Shiro found some model kits from an old animated series about fighting robot suits. It was the kind of thing he would have loved as a kid, and it was strange to think that he was kind of living it currently.

The owner eventually returned with a storage container full of Gameflux games in their original packaging. Shiro and Coran rifled through it, the former on a mission to find something for multiple players and the latter taking great joy in reading the descriptions on the back of all the boxes aloud.

There was no shortage of fighting games, but given how tense things had been lately, that probably wasn’t the best idea, even though it could be a vicarious means of blowing off steam. Finally, Shiro’s eyes settled on a particularly vivid box and he grinned as he picked it up.

“Master Racer?” Coran asked, reading the name off the back.

“I can remember playing a later version of this one,” Shiro explained. “It’s a pretty fun racing game. There are lots of characters and cars to choose from, and it’s not too hard to learn, if the others haven’t played before.”

“Might you also be interested in any of this?” The shopkeeper presented yet another container full of various items with the Gameflux logo. They happily snagged extra controllers and an adapter to allow four people to play at the same time. Coran insisted on purchasing several other games as well, but Shiro was fairly certain the racing game was going to get the most play time.

*****

When Coran and Shiro arrived back at the castle, Pidge had just finished setting up the game system to display on a large, projected holo-screen.

Allura cocked her head to one side and frowned slightly at the load screen of Killbot Phantasm 1. “These graphics are certainly...unique.”

Pidge wrinkled their nose at the display. “Yeah, this system is pretty low-tech. Earth has much better ones now.”

“It’s not this awful looking on a smaller screen,” Lance defended.

“I think we’ll be happy for the larger image when we play in split-screen,” Shiro added.

“Play what in split-screen?” Lance asked eagerly.

“Yeah, what’d you get?” Pidge wanted to know.

“Wow...” Hunk let out a low whistle when Shiro showed them their brand new copy of Master Racer. “I’ve never seen the first version of the franchise! I wonder how different it is from the ones I’ve played.”

“It’s been years since I’ve played any of them, either,” Shiro admitted, “but I’m sure at least a few of the characters and boosters are the same.”

Allura was now eyeing one of the game controllers. “These controlling options seem rather...limited. How complicated could this game really be?”

“I can see where you might think that.” Lance nodded sagely. “In fact, you don’t even have to use all of the buttons to play a racing game. The trick is in the timing and good reflexes and hand-eye coordination.”

“My reflexes and coordination are excellent,” the princess mused, “yet I still feel I may be at an unfair disadvantage, having never played one of these ‘video games’ before. Might Coran and I play a few practice rounds to acquaint ourselves with the system?”

“Seems fair,” Hunk agreed with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure all the Earthlings have played a racing game before, right?”

Everyone nodded, and Shiro added, “I can vouch for Keith having racing game experience. He prefers a real vehicle, given the choice, but he’s played his fair share.”

Lance switched off the console and swapped the adventure game for Master Racer before poking the power button again. An upbeat if tonally limited song played as an opening animation scrolled across the screen.

Shiro laughed and shook his head. “Wow... I’d forgotten what the music was like! I think I usually muted it and supplied my own.”

“Yeah, that’s going to get old pretty quickly. Especially since it’s about a sixty-second loop,” Hunk pointed out just as the music began to repeat itself.

Coran was bobbing his head to the peppy beat. “I rather like it.” The mice, who had decided to join in the fun, seemed to like it, too. 

In the meantime, Lance had made it to the player selection screen.

“I guess there’s only about eight drivers to choose from in this version.” Lance shrugged. “They’ve still got my favorite at least.”

Allura tilted her head to one side as she perused the images of the available drivers.

“My goodness,” she finally remarked, “the chest on this one seems rather unwieldy for her frame and they are very... _perky_.”

Pidge’s eyes rolled and they let out a disgusted sigh. “Video game physics tend to ignore gravity a lot.”

“My exposure to human females is understandably limited, but is that typical?”

“Well,” Hunk considered, “figures do vary in size, but those are exaggerated.”

Allura frowned. “Why?”

“At the time this game was made,” Lance began to explain but was cut off by Pidge.

“ _Only_ at the time this game was made?”

“Fair enough,” Lance admitted. “The target demographic of games like this tends to be guys that want female characters to stare at and not so much for their personalities. If you think this is bad, you should see some of the fighting games.”

“That being said,” Shiro added, “Bella’s not a bad driver choice. She’s fairly balanced skill-wise, so she’s a good choice for a beginning player.”

“I wonder if she’s racing in someone’s memory,” Allura mused, eyeing the bright pink car behind Bella in her equally eye-melting pink jumpsuit.

“Huh?” Lance asked before he remembered the significance of pink to Alteans. “Oh, the pink. On Earth, pink tends to be a color associated with girls.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, and blue is usually considered a boy color. I happen to like blue, but not just because I’m a guy.”

“How odd!” Allura laughed. “Associating colors with gender is something that had never occurred to me.”

“Lucky,” Pidge grumbled. “It’s totally arbitrary, too. When you get older, people don’t care so much, but little kids tend to get either pink or blue shoved in their faces all the time.”

Allura continued scanning the players. “Is there something wrong with that last one’s head?”

“Yeah... That one’s a bear.”

“A what?”

“It’s an animal native to Earth,” Pidge explained. “They look a little like a klanmürl, but they’re arguably less terrifying.”

“Animals on Earth are capable of controlling vehicles?” Coran was intrigued.

“Realistically, no,” Hunk broke the news. “I guess they can be trained to act like they could, but this is another example of video game rules not applying to reality. I love that bear, though. Grizz is my favorite.”

“Dude.” Lance raised a skeptical brow. “Grizz is a heavy! Why would you pick somebody so slow?”

“I like the better control on corners!” Hunk defended his choice. “Grizz is the only character I’ve ever made it all the way through Graveyard Gulch with and not fallen off the road.”

“What is a ‘heavy’?” Allura asked.

“It’s a nickname for a certain kind of driver,” Hunk answered. “They usually have bigger, bulkier vehicles, and they move slower, but they can sometimes knock other cars out of their way. There’s also regular drivers with middling speed and weight, and smaller, lighter cars that go really fast but can be knocked around by other vehicles. It’s a trade-off.”

“Although,” Shiro cautioned, “I think that’s something that may have been added into later versions of the game. The drivers in this one are probably pretty much the same.”

Hunk’s face brightened. “You mean Grizz will be faster?” Then his expression fell again. “Aw, man... Graveyard Gulch is going to be an even bigger nightmare than it usually is. Unless it’s not one of the tracks in this version?”

“Not sure, buddy. We won’t see the track list until we’re out of the character selection screen.”

Allura decided to give Bella a try, and Hunk had almost convinced Coran to race with Grizz so he could get a peek at the character in action, but the advisor had discovered a character with a mustache, and that was that.

Finally, they got their first look at the available tracks: the Original Oval, Curvy Creek, Desolate Desert, City Cruising, and Hunk’s nemesis, Graveyard Gulch.

“You guys should probably practice on the Oval,” Lance suggested. “It’s the least complicated track so you can get the basics down.” He held a controller out to explain the various buttons to an eager Altean audience. “You hold this button down for the gas-”

“What sort of gas?” Coran wanted to know. “And what purpose does it serve?”

“He means gasoline,” Hunk clarified. “The vehicles in the game use internal combustion engines that use it for fuel. What he means is that’s the button for the accelerator.”

Lance huffed. “Okay, fine. This button’s the _accelerator_. Explaining this stuff is harder than I thought it would be. Anyway, this one next to it is the brakes. You know, in case you want to slow down, but it’s a race, so why would you?”

“Sharp corners,” Hunk reminded him. “Some tracks have sharp corners, and you can’t just speed around them or you’ll skid off the road.”

“Just let up on the accelerator, then.” Lance rolled his eyes, but smiled fondly at his best friend. “On the other side of the controller, you push left and right to move, well, left and right. Either up or down will activate a booster, and that’s pretty much it.”

“What are these ‘boosters’?” Allura asked.

Pidge had been flipping through the small booklet that came in the game box. “According to this manual, each driver gets two boosters that vary character to character and can be used at any time during a race. Allura, Bella has a speed boost, and Coran, that guy’s name is Slick, and he can leave oil on the track behind him to slip up other drivers. You can also find boosters along the track that are a random mix of everyone’s boosters. You always use the last boost you picked up, otherwise it’ll be you character’s boost, if they still have any.”

“Also,” Shiro added, “if you time it just right, you can get an initial speed burst when the flag drops, but it can also slow you down if you’re not on the mark.”

Allura and Coran each took a controller and stared intently at the screen. The mice took up various perches in the laps and on the shoulders of the new racers. When the checkered flag fell, the princess’ car sped off down the track, along with vehicles controlled by the game system, leaving Coran scooting forward in little bursts. One of the mice seemed to be trying to give backseat driving advice, though Coran wouldn’t have been able to understand it.

“You need to hold down the accelerator button,” Hunk instructed instead. 

Coran corrected his tapping method and seemed to be doing all right until he suddenly began moving in circles.

“You’re holding down the turn button too long.” Lance was trying not to laugh at Coran’s dismay. The mouse on his shoulder felt no such compunction and laughed so hard they rolled off his shoulder and bounced onto the sofa cushions.

“You said the track is an oval, so shouldn’t I be turning?”

“It’s a _big_ oval,” Lance explained with a sigh. “There are basically straight stretches and you really only need to turn sharply like that at the corners.”

“Ha! You can’t trick me--ovals have no corners!”

“Curves, then! Jeez, you are so _literal_ right now...”

Eventually, Coran worked out the knack of steering about the time the other cars lapped him. He attempted to use his booster, but he’d already been passed.

Lance turned his attention to Allura. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thank you,” Allura replied absently, eyes glued to her racer. “I think I’ve got this.” Sure enough, she was out in the lead with an impressive gap between her and the second place driver. The mouse companion on her shoulder leaned into every turn and squeaked encouragement.

“Wow.” Hunk’s eyes were wide. “You’re going to take first place in your very first race. I’m impressed! I think I was next to last in mine.”

Lance shrugged off her success. “It’s probably just beginner’s luck. This is the easiest track, after all, and it’s not like the controls are that complicated.”

As if to belie that point, Coran skidded off the road after somehow running into his own booster.

Just as Allura crossed the finish line for the win and Coran was crossing it to complete his first lap, a voice called from the doorway, “You guys got started without me?”

The game was abandoned in favor of piling on top of the newly arrived Keith. 

“You got here fast!” Shiro remarked with a grin. “We were just letting the Alteans get a feel for the game because they’ve never played before.”

Hunk dashed from the room. “I’ve gotta run and get some snacks ready!”

Coran abandoned finishing his race to assist in the galley along with a sympathetic Allura.

“Don’t worry,” she assured on their way out the door. “You’ll get the hang of it. If you can maneuver a whole castle, you can drive one of these imaginary cars.”

“Whoa.” Keith blinked at the game on the screen, which had been returned to the character selection menu. “I haven’t played Master Racer in forever! Where’d you even find this? The space mall?” 

Shiro nodded. “There were other games too, but I was trying to get something several people could play at once.”

“I’m gonna have to go back there some time,” Lance mused. “I’ll bet there’s some other gems available.”

“Four controllers?” Keith observed. “How are we going to decide who plays when?”

“Good question.” Pidge considered the problem for a few moments before snapping their fingers. “I could come up with a bracket system! Except that there are only seven of us, so we’d have to throw in byes if it were single-elimination. Or maybe we could use a round robin format. I’m sure I’ve got a program that could generate something.”

“We could also draw names randomly,” Shiro said. “I can remember playing where whoever wins sits out the next round so people can rotate into the game when we had more players than controllers.”

Lance smirked. “I don’t really care how we decide the racing order as long I get to show you all my awesome driving skills.”

“Yikes.” Pidge snorted. “I’m having flashbacks to the flight simulator.”

“You guys have already seen me drive,” Keith remarked with a shrug.

“And now I’m flashing back to the most terrifying ride of my life.”

“Hey, we all survived!”

“You intentionally drove off a _cliff_ , Keith. I don’t think that necessarily translates to good race driving.”

Eventually, Hunk and the Alteans returned with snacks: pigs in blankets and soft pretzels.

“I’ll have to duck out later for the cookies and brownies that are currently baking,” Hunk informed the others as they swarmed the trays of food.

Allura eyed the cheese oozing out of the pigs in blankets. “Those contain-” she paused to shudder, “- _dairy_ , correct?”

“Yes,” Hunk answered simply but kindly. “You don’t have to eat them, if you’d prefer not to.”

Coran was already halfway through his second of the treats. “I do believe I’ve eaten worse and certainly in less pleasant company.” 

The mice didn’t seem to have any issues with dairy, either, contentedly munching on tiny versions of the snack containing only cheese.

There were a few minutes filled only by the sounds of good friends enjoying good food before the subject of how to arrange playing turns came up again.

“I’ll volunteer not to be in the first group,” Hunk proposed. “‘Cause, you know, baked goods.”

Coran and Shiro also agreed to wait out the first race.

That settled, the other four scooped up controllers and prepared to make their character selections.

“Aw, man! Who already took Ace? He’s my favorite.” Lance pouted at the screen.

“He’s my favorite, too,” Keith said as he deselected the character, “but you can have him if it means that much to you.” He chose another option.

“No way!” Lance insisted, picking a different driver. “I’m not taking him just because you ‘let’ me.”

“I’ll take him.” Pidge snagged the still available option. 

Allura decided to stick with Bella.

Shiro decided preemptively to put someone in between Lance and Keith on the couch in hopes that their competitive natures wouldn’t devolve to elbowing each other during the race. Since it might be unfairly distracting to put one of the other drivers in that spot, Shiro planted himself there.

After a short debate, they decided to use the Curvy Creek track because it was of intermediate difficulty, and though characters could slide off the main road, it was fairly easy to find it again and there were no major pitfalls.

The race began, and at first, everyone was too focused for commentary. Then Keith sideswiped Lance’s car on a turn.

“Hey, watch it!”

“You were practically taking up the whole road--I didn’t have room to just go around.”

Lance deliberately targeted Keith with a booster, and he retaliated in kind.

With the amount of slamming into one another occurring on the screen, it was probably a very good idea they had been separated physically. Shiro didn’t seem terribly pleased, but it had been his idea to sit between them, so he persevered. Allura and Pidge remained blissfully unaffected from their spots on the floor in front of the couch.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/141417795@N02/43425325461/in/album-72157697426858331/)

(Find more of clambatch's art [here](http://clambatch.tumblr.com).)

Lance and Keith crossed the finish line at almost the same time, Keith very slightly ahead. They were in third and fourth place.

“Who won?” Lance asked.

“Allura,” Pidge informed him. “Like thirty seconds ago. You guys were so busy being jerks to each other, I managed to take second, and I went off the road about three times.”

Lance sighed. “Sorry, Keith. Truce?”

Keith rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “Sure. I got caught up in it, too. Sorry.”

Coran and Shiro subbed in for Allura and Pidge, and Hunk went to check the oven.

They used this pattern of first and second place sitting out the next race for a while, taking breaks for snacks as needed. Pidge, unsurprisingly, as they had been tracking the racing stats, was the first to notice that Allura took first every time she raced.

“It’s got to be the alien genes,” Lance mused as he watched Allura flawlessly navigate a tight turn. “She’s got a better reaction time.”

“I’ve got alien genes,” Keith reminded him.

“Yeah, but you’re only half Galra at most. Plus, Allura’s Altean.”

“So’s Coran,” Hunk reminded them, “and he’s... Let’s just say I’m not seeing any inherent advantage there.” Coran was somehow currently facing the wrong direction and not even on the road.

“Do you think she’s using magic somehow?”

“Why does it bother you so much that she’s good at this?”

“It doesn’t bother me that she’s _good_ ,” Lance attempted to articulate what was bugging him. “It’s more that she’s _so_ good so fast, you know? She barely even has to work at it. Plus, she’s kind of getting a little smug about it.”

Allura crossed the finish line, in first place again, with a whoop. “This game is quite amusing,” she said, covering a small yawn, “but it’s also getting somewhat boring.”

Keith and Lance shared a look of unspoken understanding. Beating one another in the race was now less important than someone being able to beat Allura.

“Oh yeah?” Lance asked casually as the racers stood for a stretch break. “Maybe you should try the hardest track.”

Hunk gasped. “Graveyard Gulch? I’m out.”

Shiro agreed to be their fourth player for a run on the Graveyard Gulch track. It was both the longest track in the game and it had the largest number of turns, the majority of which had steep drop-offs that would cause a substantial recovery delay if drivers weren’t careful. Allura didn’t seem worried in the least. 

Coran, Pidge, and Hunk lined up behind the couch to observe, even if Hunk was doing so through his fingers.

As the racers crossed the starting line, Lance and Keith flanked Allura, keeping as close as they could. They attempted a coordinated booster attack, only to have Allura utilize her brakes to avoid them, steer around, and then use her own speed booster to leave them behind.

Hunk chuckled. “No real use for the brakes, huh, Lance?” 

Lance might have responded with a rude gesture, but his hands were busy. “Thanks for the moral support, buddy.”

Shiro frowned, half in disapproval and half because he was doing his best not to fall over a cliff on a turn. “Were you two really just ganging up on Allura? Kind of rude, don’t you think?” 

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Allura remarked dismissively. “They didn’t do a very good job of it.”

One of Shiro’s eyebrows climbed upward. “You’re awfully confident.” 

“If the other races we’ve played thus far are any indication, they can try their best and it won’t matter.” The mouse on her shoulder nodded in agreement.

Shiro’s other eyebrow joined the first. He looked over at Lance and Keith, scrambling to catch up again and then smirked, though Allura couldn’t see it.

The double booster stunt had slowed her down enough that Shiro was still fairly close, and he waited until they were on a turn to bump into the side of Allura’s car. She managed, just barely, to remain on the road. Her jaw dropped in indignation for a moment before she grinned wickedly right back at Shiro. “Oh, I see how it is!”

The remainder of the race could be described as nothing less than brutal. Shiro, Lance, and Keith held nothing back, all teaming up to keep Allura from taking first place again. In turn, Allura had to employ every ounce of coordination she could muster and missed no opportunity to fire boosters back. The three team members in the “audience” behind the couch cheered everyone on equally.

Allura crossed the finish ahead of the others, but due to all of their interference, a character controlled by the computer had taken first place.

Allura released a huff of breath and looked down. At first, everyone was afraid she was going to be angry with them, but then her shoulders began to shake and she laughed.

“That was by far the most challenging race tonight! Well done, if not quite enough to beat me.”

“We’ll figure it out one of these times!” Lance proclaimed, followed by a large yawn.

“Probably better not try again tonight,” Shiro remarked. “I think we should all head to bed. We can always play some more in the morning.”

A chorus of yawning had followed Lance’s initial contribution, and Pidge was already half asleep, propped between Hunk and the back of the couch.

“This was really fun.” Keith smiled at their makeshift family. “We should do this more often.”

“Definitely!”

“Speaking of tomorrow,” Lance wondered, “will we be racing more, or did you get any other games we can play with a group?”

“Indeed!” Coran affirmed. “I can’t recall what it was called at the moment, but Shiro said something about tiny games?”

“Mini games?” Pidge perked up at the idea. “Tell me you found a copy of Alfredo’s Festival!”

Suddenly, every Earthling in the room seemed to be a bit more awake.

“ _Tomorrow_ ,” Shiro reminded them firmly. “We’re done for tonight.” To emphasize his point he stood, walked over, and hit the power switch on the console. There was some unhappy grumbling, but they all began to file out of the room and head to their quarters for the night.

“Am I to understand that this other game is composed of many games that are very small?” Allura asked.

“The ‘mini’ name isn’t so much about literal size,” Pidge explained. “It’s more that the games are simple and short so you can play a bunch of them in a row easily.”

“The controls are even simpler than racing. You’re gonna love it, Coran.”

Shiro hung back, watching the others leave the room. It was good to have everyone together again. No one knew when the next catastrophe might strike, but for at least this one night, it had been so much fun to forget about responsibility and just enjoy one another’s company. If they were lucky, the peace would hold out through the morning, or at least long enough for everyone to enjoy a nice breakfast together and the chaos bound to spring up during a rousing game of Alfredo’s Festival.

 


End file.
